Enabling Enterprise Development: A Selection of Best Practices in Harnessing Distributed Energy for Productive Uses

The United Nations Foundation's Energy Access Practitioner Network, in partnership with the Clean Energy Solutions Center and the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP), will kick off a new Practitioner Network webinar series to share best practices in different geographic and thematic contexts. This first webinar will explore the role of distributed energy solutions in enabling and promoting enterprise development in sub-Saharan Africa via a recently launched publication compiled by the Africa EU Energy Partnership, AEEP Energy Access Best Practices 2016. The publication draws on experiences from the private and public sectors, as well as civil society, to showcase a selection of the latest innovative renewable energy projects in Africa. The report includes projects that utilize different technologies and approaches in diverse geographical locations, and the webinar will provide a platform to explore three of these case studies looking specifically at the productive uses of energy and energy access as an enabler for enterprise development.

Each speaker in this session will showcase their respective organization's experience, with particular attention to:

Unique local energy access challenges faced by the community

Opportunities to harness distributed clean energy for productive uses in the given context

Renewable energy solutions and the project outcomes.

The webinar aims to support and incentivize decision makers to continue improving framework conditions for the implementation of business models based on renewable energy solutions. It also intends to enable project developers and financiers to further boost the quality and quantity of rural electrification projects that increase communities' productivity, expand their range of enterprises, and do so in a sustainable manner that is beneficial to people and the environment alike.

Jem Porcaro, Senior Director of Energy Access at United Nations Foundation will introduce the topic and provide context to the broader webinar series on best practices.

David Lecoque, Policy and Business Development Manager at Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE), will provide an introduction to the AEEP Energy Access Work Stream - and contextualize the 2016 best practices report.

Benjamin Pallière, Energy Access Advisor at Geres, will present on the Green Business Area model, which provides clean energy access for the productive uses of MSMEs in Konseguela, Mali.

Tobias Zwirner, Managing Director of Phaesun GmbH, will speak about the Business Opportunities with Solar Systems (BOSS) solutions project in Somaliland, which specifically targets the commercial sector in non-electrified areas.

Karl Kolmsee, Managing Director and CEO of Smart Hydro Power GmbH, will present a project that powers a rice mill and 30 households in rural India with a hybrid hydro-PV power plant.